The term "color" refers to the division of population into two groups, white and nonwhite. The color group designated as "nonwhite" consists of such races as the Negro, American Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Asian, Indian, and Malayan races. Persons of Mexican birth or ancestry who are not definitely of Indian or other nonwhite race are classified as white.

Excerpt from:

U.S. Bureau of the Census. U.S. Census of Population: 1960. Subject Reports, Nonwhite Population by Race. Final Report PC(2)-1C. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 1963.

The data on race were derived from answers to the following question on the Advance Census Report:

The concept of race as used by the Bureau of the Census is derived from that which is commonly accepted by the general public. It does not, therefore, reflect clear-cut definitions of biological stock, and several categories obviously refer to national origins.

The term "color" refers to the division of population into two groups, white and nonwhite. The color group designated as "nonwhite" includes Negroes, American Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Hawaiians, Asian Indians, Malayans, Eskimos, Aleuts, etc. Persons of Mexican birth or ancestry who are not definitely of Indian or other nonwhite race are classified as white.

In addition to persons of Negro and mixed Negro and white descent, this classification, according to instructions to enumerators, includes persons of mixed American Indian and Negro descent, unless the Indian ancestry very definitely predominates or unless the individual is regarded as an Indian in the community.

In addition to full-blooded American Indians, persons of mixed white and Indian blood are included in this category if they are enrolled on an Indian tribal or agency roll or if they are regarded as Indians in their community. A common requirement for such enrollment at present is that the proportion of Indian blood should be at least one-fourth.

In the eastern part of the United States, there are certain populations of mixed white, Negro, and Indian ancestry. In censuses prior to 19$0, these groups had been variously classified by the enumerators, sometimes as Negro and sometimes as Indian. In 1950, an attempt was made to isolate these groups and include them in the category "All other" races. Because of problems in the identification of these groups in 1950 and the likelihood that they would not be distinguishable in self-enumeration, this effort was abandoned in the 1960 Census. Generally, the number involved was small except in North Carolina, which had a heavy concentration of this mixed racial population (notably in Robeson and surrounding counties).

Racial categories such as Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, etc., are based largely on country or area of origin, and not necessarily on biological stock.
Statistics based on the 25-percent sample are given in this report for Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and a residual "All other" races category. This residual category includes Hawaiians, Eskimos, Aleuts, Koreans, Asian Indians, Malayans, etc. The last two tables of this report, showing characteristics of racial categories in Alaska and Hawaii, include data based on the complete count for Aleuts and Eskimos in Alaska and for Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians in Hawaii. These special categories were not included separately in the 25-percent sample enumeration schedules5 and they were included in 100-percent schedules only for the two States mentioned. The figure for part- Hawaiians does not include any other racial mixtures, such as white-Japanese or Chinese-Japanese. In the 1950 Census of Hawaii, as the result of a special question on mixed race, approximately 4 percent of the total population were reported as of a mixed racial group other than part-Hawaiian.

Respondents and enumerators sometimes report, for the racial classification, such entries as "Puerto Rican," "Turk," "Germanic," and others, which should have teen included within one of the Census Bureau's broader categories such as "White," or "Negro." The relative frequency of these various types within the residual "All other" races category is not known.

Figures for the "All other" races category and other categories may differ somewhat between tabulations based on the 25-percent sample and the complete count shown in this report and elsewhere. (See table A.) Race entries on all 25-percent sample schedules were edited as a routine part of the manual coding operation, and obvious errors were corrected. In processing the complete-count schedules, however, only those enumeration districts in which the number of "All other" races entries exceeded certain tolerances were visually inspected. Although these tolerances were stringent, they were not sufficient to prevent inclusion of a substantial number of spurious cases in the statistics.

Table A. Comparison of Complete-Count and Sample Data for the Nonwhite Population by Race, For the United States: 1960
(Minus sign (-) indicates sample lower than complete count)

Persons of mixed racial parentage are classified according to the race of the non- white parent, and mixtures of nonwhite races are classified according to the race of the father, with the special exceptions noted above.

Since the 1960 Census was the first in which most respondents had an opportunity to classify themselves with respect to race-in previous censuses the racial classification was made for the most part by the enumerator on the basis of observation-it was expected that the character of the racial data in 1960 might differ from that of previous censuses. Some persons undoubtedly would have been classified differently by race in the 1960 Census if direct enumeration had been used uniformly, especially in families involving mixed racial marriages, but such differences as existed may have been largely offsetting. In terms of the final results, there is little evidence of a change for the major categories. The distribution of the population by color in 1960 was close to that shown by postcensal estimates for 1960 based on the 1950 Census counts by color and estimated population changes during the decade. The increase in the Negro population, in particular, was consistent with the statistics on its natural increase during the decade. The increases in the Japanese and Chinese population were large, but high rates of natural increase and substantial immigration during the decade obscure any effects which self-enumeration may have had on the 1960 count. Results of the evaluation studies on the classification of the population by color, white and nonwhite, may be found in the "Evaluation and Research" series of 1960 Census reports.

The use of self-enumeration may have added to the accuracy of the 1960 count of the Indian population. Studies of the adequacy of the enumeration In the last several censuses have led to the conclusion that it was incomplete largely as the result of the failure of enumerators to identify off-reservation Indians.
Age data for Indians show a marked concentration in the age group 55 to 59 years in urban areas. Investigations indicate this may be a result of a combination of factors among which "age heaping" may be of Importance. The reader is referred to a discussion of the reporting of age in 1960 Census of Population, Volume I, Characteristics of the Population, Part 1, United States Summary. Also to be considered is the possibility that the increase in the movement of Indians off reservations during the late thirties was reflected in the decennial census for the first time in 1960, as a result of more precise reporting.

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